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Zhao Ziwen

China has rejected US claims that it conducted a nuclear test in 2020, saying the accusation is “an excuse” to justify a potential US return to nuclear testing.
“The United States has persistently distorted and smeared China’s nuclear policy,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Wednesday.
The pushback was in response to a statement by Thomas DiNanno, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, in Geneva on Friday.
“The US government is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tonnes,” DiNanno said, adding that one of such “yield-producing tests” was conducted on June 22, 2020.
The People’s Liberation Army “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions” because it recognised that these tests violated test ban commitments, he said, without specifying where the tests allegedly took place.
“China has used ‘decoupling’, a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring, to hide its activities from the world.”
Lin said the US allegation was “baseless” and served only as a pretext for reviving its own nuclear testing programme.
He also said the US was “the biggest source of disruption to the international nuclear order and global strategic stability”.
“This is essentially political manipulation aimed at seeking nuclear hegemony and shirking its own nuclear disarmament responsibilities. China firmly opposes this.”


DiNanno made the claim at a global disarmament conference a day after the expiration of a decades-long treaty limiting US and Russian missile and warhead deployments.
On February 5, the last nuclear weapons control treaty between the US and Russia – the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New Start – officially expired, leaving a vacuum in arms control between the two powers for the first time since 1972.
US President Donald Trump has criticised the treaty a number of times and hinted that the United States might restart nuclear tests.
Trump has also sought a new agreement that includes China, which is rapidly increasing its own arsenal.
Shortly before he met Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea last year, he said he had “instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis” due to other countries’ testing programmes.
In an interview in January, Trump again said he had spoken at length with Xi on nuclear issues, without giving further details.
According to a report last year by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia had 5,459 nuclear warheads, and the US 5,177. China came as a distant third with at least 600.
Beijing has not responded to Washington’s nuclear control offer. The country’s last recorded nuclear test, an underground detonation in the western region of Xinjiang, was in 1996. China signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations less than two months after that test.
The last recorded nuclear test by the US was in Nevada in 1992. If a nuclear test is conducted during Trump’s presidency, it will be the first since the administration of former president George H.W. Bush.


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China

Diplomacy

Beijing says Washington is distorting China’s policy and trying to avoid its own disarmament responsibilities


Beijing says Washington is distorting China’s policy and trying to avoid its own disarmament responsibilities.


United States

Russia

Donald Trump

China accuses US of seeking to revive its nuclear test programme

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beijing says Washington is distorting China’s policy and trying to avoid its own disarmament responsibilities

Beijing says Washington is distorting China’s policy and trying to avoid its own disarmament responsibilities